The Heartache
by Vlad Taltos
Summary: This is listed under misc. plays because it has a lot of drama. Rated T for sadness. If you know me personally, it is not a good idea for you to read this. The song for this is "The Heartache" by Warren Zevon


Well, I'm completely giving up on the whole, "It's a story, I swear!" charade. Like everything else I've written, this is going to reflect something in my life that either has happened or that I wanted to happen. Unlike the other stories, I'm not even going to try disguising it as anything else. I wrote those that way so that if anyone I knew read them, they would not immediately make the connection. I know now that, out of all the people that I've told about my stories, none have bothered to look them up, so there is no longer a need to pretend. If, by some miracle, someone I know (particularly the girl this is about) does read this, well, my life already sucks, people knowing I'm obsessive over delusions of love can't make it much worse than it already is. So if this is Rachele reading this, just know that you don't have to get a restraining order, I'll move to my mom's in Syracuse if you want me too.

A good song for this is "The Heartache" by Warren Zevon.

Part one- The Plan

I'd liked her for... oh, about three months. Actually, a little more than that. Since a few days after the first day of school, when I first noticed her (I'm very unobservant, she sat right in front of me at the time). Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Well, despite what the Beatles have to say on the matter, no. Not that it matters, you know I'm delusional, I stated it already.

The thing that convinced me my delusion was love at first sight, though, was that she was blond. If you've read my other stories you know that all of the major female characters have long black hair. Did you think I was above incorporating my fetishes into my stories? How naive are you? Anyway, I've never liked blond hair, to me it was a obvious marker of bitchy, preppy girls, the kind that would say, "Hey, Kid!" in a superior tone if I didn't notice a stack of papers I was supposed to be passing back, saying it so that it was like rubbing my face in the fact that I was too low on the social ladder to even bother with remembering my name. So why did I like her? Why was her blond hair attractive to me? I didn't know at the time, but I began to pay more attention to her. I quickly found out she was not like the stereotypical teenage blond at all. She certainly was not stupid, from what I could tell her grades were good. She always had a smile, she laughed easily and on the one occasion where I made a pathetic attempt at conversation she endured the brief awkward moment with patience before walking away, shooting me one last confused glance that said, in as nice a way as possible, "What the hell. Why is this stranger commenting on the cold I had a week ago?"

So what was I going to do? If you've read my poems (and deciphered my convoluted sentences), you know that my past encounters with girls have been notoriously pitiful, so how was I going to approach her? Should I even try, given my record? My answer was a resolute "No" for a good three months, but as the holiday season came around and the few friends I had were cycling through parters even faster than normal, I somehow convinced myself that "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" was a quote to live by. On the last day of school for 2010, after the last bell rang, I was committed to standing up, walking by her as she headed for the door of the classroom and saying, "Merry Christmas." I should have taken it as an omen that, even though she lagged behind to let the rush of people past, I was still blocked by stragglers and wasn't able to get close enough to complete my mission. Intent and persistent, however, I went to my locker, got everything I needed over break, and when I was ready to go home I made a detour past her locker (I'd known where it was for about a month and a half). As I passed I saw a chance, walked up so that I was just within hearing distance and said, "Merry Christmas Rachele." Before she could even turn towards me I was gone. I heard a muffled, "Thanks" from behind me, but I wasn't sure if it was her or my imagination.

I went home, looked up her Facebook for the millionth time, and finally decided to send a friend request. A few days later she accepted. It was like a gold mine. I know it sounds cyber stalker-ish, and if I wasn't clouded by my own feelings on the matter I would probably agree, but all I was doing was seeing what kinds of things she liked to use for conversation starters when (it was not "if," but "when") I talked to her again. I planed on a actual conversation the next time around, not just telling her that it was good that she was feeling better from her cold. So I learned a few things about her, she liked a certain basket ball team and a certain book series, and that she had some close friends. Most importantly, though I didn't know it at the time, was that I learned her last name.

And then I went snowboarding. I was actually looking forward to the day long session, it would get my mind off of her and maybe I wouldn't check her FB page every ten minutes. So I went with my old math teacher, a very generous man who had paid for all of the equipment out of his own pocket, and the older boy that we usually boarded with. I knew the older boy, we had snowboarded all the previous year together, but I could never remember his name. And, as I'm sitting in the back seat minding my own business, just who's last name happens to come up in conversation from the seat in front of me? Her's! I pop my earbuds out and burst into the conversation like a rhino with, "Wait, what did you say?" When the boy repeats himself, he says something about how the name on his driver's license was wrong on the first print, and they had to print him a new one. It just so happened that his last name was the same as her's.

I ask him if he knew her and he said, "Yeah, she's my sister."

I immediately thought I was in hot water and extracted myself from the conversation, trying to be more graceful than my entrance into it.

I contemplated what this new information meant. I had been to the older boy's house to pick him up before, so, assuming he was still living with his parents at that time I had seen his house (he was pretty old, it was possible he had moved out before I met him), I knew where she lived. Following this assumtion, the house had been large and in a relatively good part of town, so she was easily middle class, if not upper middle class. With the things I already knew about her, I started to form a picture of her character. Based on the number of FB friends and the number of close friends she had, she was very sociable, the exact opposite of me, and she was good in school, which meant she probably would not want to be distracted by boys like me, and she was from a stable family situation, so she probably would not be interested in a kid from the projects (like me). Add this to the fact that she was already way out of my league looks-wise, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.

Completely undeterred (I've said I was delusional more than once now, why are you still expecting rational actions?), I made plans about how to talk to her again. It should be on the first day back to school, I'd have to wait through all of Christmas Break, so why make it longer, but it should be at the end of the day. We had last period together, so I'd just ask her if she had a minute. Since her house was close to the school, I figured I could ask to walk her home, but I didn't want to be pushy about it. And when I had the meeting started, what would I say? I thought about it for a while and came up with several possibilities. "Hi, I snowboard with your brother," was one. Or maybe, "Hey, so I heard you like that one book series, I do too!" Or, "So what was the score of the last game?" And then after talking for a bit I would try to steer the conversation towards stuff about me, falling back on the stuff I knew about her to fill in any awkward moments. And after a while she would see that I'm not like most boys my age. She would see that I'm mature, unlike the baboons that run around the school, beating their fists against their chests. She would see that I value education, and that I'm planning on going to Syracuse University. She would see that I like too write, and that I communicate much better this way than I do when speaking. And maybe, after she saw those things about me, she would like me the way I like her.

Part Two- Reality

For those of you who like happy endings, stop here.

My plan got about as far as me making it to school on the right day. That's it. I was nervous as hell as I walked into school, so when I saw my friend I told him, "I'm going to talk to a girl today." It was about the stupidest thing I could do, but I did it. As I chilled in the cafeteria waiting for the bell to ring, I figured the dam was already broken, so I told another friend. And then another. It didn't matter, they didn't know who I was talking about and they didn't know her, so even if they did they could not tip her off to anything suspicious. But telling them while I was nervous made me hyper, it made me want to just go. Just talk to her and get it over with. So, when the first bell rang, that is what I did. I went to my locker, got what I needed for the day, then headed over to her locker. I saw it approaching, the group of girls getting closer, and chickened out and kept walking. As I was getting to the end of the hall, scolding myself for being so weak, I took a deep breath and turned back around, toward her.

I never should have done it this way. She was in the middle of a group of her friends, so even if she might have said anything other than this, she was under peer pressure. When I walked up to her, kind of squeezing between the semicircle of girls and the wall of lockers, I said, "Um, hi, uh, Rachele?"

It got her attention, but it also got the attention of the entire group of girls. I'm not sure how many, but at least six extra pairs of eyes swiveled to look at me. It threw me off, because when this was all in my head I hadn't planned on a crowd of people watching. I brushed it off, though, and was about to say it... when I didn't know what to say. I couldn't start talking about the score of the last ball game, I just butted in on their conversation. "I snowboard with your brother," would not have been too bad, in hindsight, but I didn't remember it at the time. So, feeling pressed for time, I just said the first thing that came to my mind.

"Are you seeing anyone?"

I could not believe I said it. There was only one reason why I would have asked that, and that was if was going to ask her out. But I didn't not want to "go out" with her, exactly, I just wanted her to see me, the real me, to see if she liked me. She couldn't tell if she didn't know me, right?

There was a second of silence before she said, "No. Why?" It wasn't in an inviting way, like she was exited I was saying it, but it wasn't exactly hostile, so she wasn't warning me not to go any farther. It would have been best if I had just stopped there and said, "Oh, no reason," and calmly walked away, but I didn't

"Well, I was, uh, just wondering if you wanted to do something, um, sometime." In my peripheral vision I think I saw a reaction from the girls, but at the first sign of movement I looked at my shoes. When she started talking again I looked back up, but avoided looking at her face.

"Oh, um, I'm not really looking for anyone right now."

I'm not sure what facial expression she was wearing when she said it, a raised eyebrow to indicate, "Well, not _you _anyway," or a soft smile that said, "I'm sorry but I'm just not ready for a relationship right now," or even a blankness that didn't say anything. I don't know, I wasn't looking. I just grinned lightly, so as to appear unfazed, and said, "That's okay." Then I turned and walked to my first period class.

I've been writing bad poetry, numbing my mind with video games and eating chocolate ever since.

Edit 3/30/2011: Wow. I just went back and read this. I'm still writing bad poetry, still playing to much video games and I've gained a few pounds from chocolate (though that is probably a good thing for my skinny ass). Also, my grades have dropped twenty points and I've lost the respect of my hypocritical, fucked up family. My idiot ideas have successfully ruined my life.


End file.
